Let’s look at smoking side effects this way. We can put into words the several things we like about smoking; but there are a host of smoking side effects, nagging annoyances and suspicions about the cigarette habit that we find it difficult to discuss-and most of them add up to the fact that we who smoke too much rarely feel completely up to par.
Dr. E. C. Hammond made an important study in 1961, questioning 18,697 men and 24,371 women, all over the age of 30, about physical complaints in relation to smoking habits. These were some of the many complaints found to be associated with smoking:
Coughing . . .
Hoarseness . . .
Shortness of breath . . .
Chest pain or discomfort. . .
Appetite loss . . .
Nausea and vomiting . . .
Stomach pain . . .
Discomfort or pain in the lower abdomen . . .
Diarrhea . . .
Easy fatigue . . .
Insomnia . . .
Now if we couple this list of smoking side effects and physical complaints with statistics on the far more serious health hazards linked to cigarette smoking, we must then assume that the pleasures of the habit must be enormous indeed to outweigh them.
And here am I, saying that they're not-that you don't really enjoy cigarettes nearly as much as you think you do and are told you do.
Before we go further, shall we just briefly survey the latest medical facts? Some may be "controversial," and so why don't you discount each by a considerable percentage? Even then . . .
The Odds Aren’t Good
The American Medical Association has released statistics based on a study of thousands of coronary deaths. They show that the death rate among men who smoked more than a pack a day was twice that of non-smokers.
The Mayo Clinic team of heart specialists, Doctors English, Willius and Berkson, placed the odds even more dramatically. They reported that in coronary deaths, the rate is six times higher for smokers than it is for non-smokers.
Two English physicians, W. R. Doll and A. B. Hill, have made a number of significant studies. One shows that with men under 55, coronary deaths increase in tidy ratio to cigarette consumption. The rate is lowest for non-smokers, highest for heavy smokers.
Two Brooklyn physicians, Doctor Daniel J. Nathan and Doctor David M. Spain, studied 3,000 men-and found that among those under the age of 51 who smoked more than two packs a day, the frequency of heart ailments was twice that of non-smokers.
Declares the Royal College of Physicians of London: The chances of a 35-year-old man who is a heavy smoker dying within ten years is one in twenty-three. For a non-smoker of the same age, the chance is one out of ninety.
It Boils Down to Whether You Like Living or Not
Now for a few final words about lung cancer. Doctors Doll and Hill in England made a study of 3,000 patients over forty-five years old and reported: Smokers have a 50% greater chance of getting lung cancer than non-smokers.
Doctor Ivan Vaselevich Strelchuk, Russian physician and research specialist, declares: "Smokers are ten times more likely to get cancer than non-smokers."
Indeed, there have been accurate investigations of the cancer-smoking link in nine countries. In every study, the figures were about the same. The connection is always there, the grim ratio is always there.
And in Addition …
Bronchitis, thromboangitis obliterans, premature births, underweight infants at birth, increased mortality rates for peptic ulcer patients, cancer of the mouth and larynx and oesophagus, eye ailments, decreased sexual abilities-all these diseases or conditions have also been linked directly to smoking.
Statistical information as conclusive and damning as these proven odds that you may suffer a painful death many years in advance of normal life expectancy might seem sufficient to persuade most persons to abandon the habit immediately. But they're not.
And even recognition of the fact that the statistics have been gathered by an unbiased group of scientific researchers, and released by the medical profession only in the interest of saving lives, isn't sufficient.
Why?
Well, there's a psychological finding that goes a little way toward explaining why this campaign hasn't been effective. "Fear campaigns" rarely work. Similar campaigns have been just as ineffective against automobile accidents, H-bomb testing, and inadequate protection from radioactive fallout.
First You Try to Find "Some Other Reason"
The characteristic reaction to any "scare" or "threat" is immediate fear. If the threat can be readily and easily dealt with, then it's disposed of and the fear vanishes.
However, if there seems to be a possibility of failure in dealing with the threat, or if any action in coping with it or any reaction to it will cause discomfort or displeasure, intense feelings of mental anxiety and tension result. To avoid this, the individual deals with his fear through a process that involves rationalizing away its importance. He downgrades it. He classifies it as insignificant, and ignores it.
The American Automobile Association has made numerous attempts to publicize the need for safety belts in cars. They claim that 5,000 lives a year could be saved, and at least a third of all serious injuries eliminated, through the use of seat belts. But drivers still believe that "accidents only happen to the other fellow."
I wondered, when I varied between desperate attempts to stop smoking and renewed puffing away of ever-increasing numbers of cigarettes each day, just how come I was acting in such ostrich-like fashion. Searching for an answer, I spoke with several friends. First I went to a clear-headed acquaintance who's a minister.
"People shut their eyes," he said, "and hope that the bogeyman will go away. I have a niece named Suzi," he continued. "She's a charming little three-year-old, and when Suzi doesn't like something she has her own way of handling the problem. She simply clamps her eyes shut; she expects that if she doesn't see it, it's not there. Or that by the time she opens her eyes, it will have gone away."
I'm not exactly a charming three-year-old, but I must admit that on occasion my logic had been on a par with Suzi's. For example, when I saw in a news report that the death-rate for heavy smokers is four times greater (from all causes) than it is for non-smokers, I reacted by lighting a cigarette. Psychologically, I suppose, I was saying to myself: "Jack, do you believe that statistic? What? You do? Well, buddy, don't. Forget it. You just go ahead and light up. There -you didn't topple over, did you? Forget it, Jack. … relax!"
My minister friend insists that many of us continue to smoke because we're secretly afraid that some damage has already been done to our bodies, and that stopping now wouldn't do any good.* But so long as we continue to smoke, then every puff (just as long as we can puff) denies our worries. We're like the poor fellow who shouts "You can't do this to me!" all the way to the death-house. He continues fervently to believe it until the current goes zzzzzzzzzz.
We'd Rather Smoke than Fail in the Effort to Stop
The next man with whom I spoke happened to be a sports columnist. "I can't speak with authority about others," he said, "but I know that Americans are trained from childhood to want to win. Or, looking at it another way, we hate to lose. And what we hate to lose most of all, I think, is our self-respect.
"Now look at a typical girl in an office. Annie decides that she's smoking too much-her fingers and teeth are tattle-tale yellow, and her purse has got a layer of tobacco shreds at its bottom. She announces her big decision. She tells her family and friends and her co-workers. She sets a date and a time. She throws away any extra packs of cigarettes she has in her desk, or she gives them to the boys in the mail-room. And then Annie does it. She actually stops smoking.
"But," my friend continued, "it only lasts for a while. She starts to smoke again. Her friends tease her. And she herself is disturbed by her failure. Where's her will power? Her moral strength? Down goes Annie's self-respect.
"So, because she just doesn't want to lose that self-respect, up she comes with an interesting excuse. Annie explains that she did, after all, succeed in stopping for a few days. Long enough to prove to herself that she could
* The reverse is the truth, as we'll see.
stop any time she wanted to if she was really, underline really, determined to stop. And having proved that to herself, it was okay to start smoking again.
"In short, Annie is more frightened of the fact that she may flop in her efforts to stop smoking than she is of the effects of continued smoking."
Here, too, I could recognize myself. It is a blow to one's ego to fail, again and again, at something that seems so simple.
I then discussed the matter with a professor of education. "Easy enough to understand," he said. "Every teacher knows it. People remember what they want to remember. They forget what they do not want to remember. Oh-and they remember what surprises them."
"Sorry," I said, "but you've lost me."
"I'll give you an example," he answered. "Two young people meet and fall in love. When you're courting, it's important to remember little things. What's more, you want to remember them. So they remember everything-the first day they met, the first time they dined together, their first dance, their first kiss, the weather on the day he proposed. For a woman, this is the most exciting, romantic time of her life. She wants to remember it. She always does. For the man, it's done and over. It was kid stuff. He's anxious to forget what he thinks of as hooey.’ Five years later, he doesn't even remember their anniversary date."
"Sure," I said, "but now about smoking…."
"Please pay attention," he directed. "You do not want to remember the terrifying statistics about cancer and heart disease and bronchitis. So you don't. You do want to remember the so-called pleasures of smoking. So you do.
"And," he continued, rising in his chair as if to end a class, "you'll always remember the cranberry scare, even though it's over and done with, and even though cranberries are safe and delectable. That's because it surprised you. If I tell you now that tight shoes cause cirrhosis, you'll also remember that."
"Do they?" I asked.
"No," he said, "but you'll remember it."
So I Tried My Best to Remember
This gentleman, I thought, had made a good point. To buttress my ability to remember, I took to carrying little messages to myself in my cigarette case. I clipped a paragraph from the Journal of the American Medical Association:
The board now believes that it has a further responsibility to both the medical profession and the general public to state that in its judgment the clinical, epidemiological, experimental, chemical and pathological evidence presented by the many studies reported in recent years indicates beyond a reasonable doubt that cigarette smoking is the major cause of the unprecedented increase in lung cancer.
With my red ball-point pen I underlined two phrases -"clinical, epidemiological, experimental, chemical and pathological evidence" (which covers the whole field of medicine and research) and "beyond a reasonable doubt." And below that I wrote: "In a first-degree murder trial, the jury must vote for conviction if it believes the defendant guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
But I soon paid no more attention to that slip than I did to the few words on the blue excise stamps that seal every pack of cigarettes sold in the country. I gave my message away, finally, to some chap who thought it might help him stop smoking.
However, these have all been negative points. Fear campaigns don't work, since we just make believe that it "can't happen to us." We hate to fail-and so we continue to smoke rather than face the private and public humiliation of failure. Our mind performs acrobatics so that we forget what we do not like to remember.
But what about the positive facts? What about the pleasures of smoking that we do like to remember?
The most universally accepted rationalization about smoking is that a cigarette helps you relax.
I accepted this statement for years. It seemed logical, because any time I was tense or nervous, I reached for a cigarette. What's more, when I tried to stop smoking one of the smoking side effects I experienced was that I became tense and nervous. Ergo: Smoking relaxes you.
Unless you examine the facts carefully, it's easy to accept this bromide. Even now you want to believe it to be true, because part of you wants to continue smoking.
The simple truth is that not one of the 200 chemical substances in the smoke of a cigarette is in any way soothing to your nervous system.
If You Smoke One Cigarette an Hour Your Blood Pressure is Never Normal
Quite to the contrary, the smoke you inhale can be a serious irritant to the nervous system.
A single puff on a cigarette can stimulate the heart in some smokers to beat as many as twenty-eight extra times in a minute. The smoking contracts the blood vessels; then the heart must beat faster to send the blood circulating.
The Mayo Clinic established that contraction of the blood vessels can endure for one hour after the cigarette has been finished. For many of us who smoke just one cigarette an hour, our blood pressure is never normal.
Multiply those extra twenty-eight beats per minute by fourteen cigarettes (hence, fourteen hours) of smoking. It amounts to 23,520 extra beats for the heart every day. Even without the corroborating reports from the heart specialists, it's easy to see that this extra work for your heart can't be doing your health any good.
If It Isn’t the Tobacco That Relaxes You, What Is It?
"There may not be any particular ingredient in cigarettes that help me relax," you may say. "But I still know that in my case, a cigarette does relax my tensions.”
Once I would have heartily agreed. In fact, I'd have challenged anyone who didn't agree with the statement. It seemed positively self-evident.
If I was in a golf match and a critical putt was coming up, I'd take time out to light a cigarette to "steady my nerves.”
If I had been at the typewriter and the words and ideas had begun to slow down, I'd take time out for a cigarette ... collect my thoughts ... and then get back to work.
Doing research work in the library, I might after a while begin to feel "fuzzy." I'd walk outside and have a smoke. Then I'd be relaxed and ready to hit the books again.
I'm sure you can find dozens of parallel examples in your own daily living. At times when you've been upset, angry, in a tight spot, worried, concerned about a situation, or just in need of a break from concentration, you'd take time out and light a cigarette. And you'd find yourself more relaxed.
It's the Concentration Break You Need, Not Nicotine
What's the answer, then, if there is no tranquilizing or narcotic effect in smoking? How does a cigarette produce undeniably calming sensations? Or, to be more precise, if there are actually irritating and stimulating substances in the smoke, known to interfere with relaxation (as there are!), where does the seemingly calming effect come from?
It isn't as contradictory as it may appear.
The point overlooked in these personal statements is "I took time out to light a cigarette." Put the emphasis on "time out"-and forget about the smoking -and you've found the secret. You break concentration by the simple mechanical act of "taking time out" to light and puff on a cigarette.
And it's the act of breaking concentration-whether you forget momentarily about a putt in golf, or take your mind off your work, or divert your attention from fears and anxieties-that results in your feeling of relaxation and release.
With a Concentration Break, You Can Begin to Forget about Cigarettes
Let's examine this more closely. Suppose you're worried about something. You're anxious about a telephone call that may bring either good or bad news. Or you're waiting for word in a hospital.
You light a cigarette, and there's a momentary feeling of relaxation.
The tobacco isn't soothing to your nerves or tissue. But letting your mind move away from your problems long enough to light up and think about smoking will cause a genuine relaxed feeling. When you're concentrating on a problem or a situation or even on an event that's perfectly pleasant, you don't know what's coming next. The future is unknown. But when you pop a cigarette from the pack, your future smoking side effects are known. The gesture is familiar, the results are predictable- and therefore the ritual is reassuring. You exchange a known sequence for an unknown.
When you couple an "old shoe" routine with a diverting shift of focus, relaxation must result.
It's just as easy as that.
You can prove this to yourself. The next time you feel the urge to smoke, don't light up. Instead, take three deep breaths and deliberately shift your mind from whatever you've been thinking about. Think about something else-something pleasant-for a few moments. The need for a cigarette will pass without discomfort.
This is only a quick illustration of relaxation, and you will receive instructions for a much more effective method later-but it is sufficient for this little test.
Did a Smoke Ever Calm You When You Were in Big Trouble?
Further proof that it's the break in concentration that relaxes you, not the cigarette, lies in the fact that on those occasions when you've been concentrating on some extremely important problem, you may take only a puff or two and then let the cigarette burn itself out while you return to your work.
Often, when I was smoking and writing, I'd find two or three cigarettes burning at the same time.
Now look at it another way. Think back to a time when you were deeply worried, tense and jumpy. Perhaps someone was ill. Perhaps there was a personal problem concerning your job. Did you smoke excessively? Did that excessive smoking really provide relaxation, or did it merely result in a "smoked out" feeling-thick tongue and raw throat?
One other element of this theory that "cigarettes relax me" is interesting. Just the conviction that the statement is true is sufficient to give it some validity.
For example, you’ve heard about "placebos." They're pills, usually, that contain no medicine, and they're sometimes given to patients so that the patients will think they're getting medication. Hypochondriacs are given them very frequently; says the doctor as he dispenses a dozen of these colorful capsules of nothing, "This is a new preparation, Mrs. Smith. I think it will help you."
And do you know what? The "new preparation" does help! By swallowing placebos people lose weight, gain weight, are freed from migraine headaches, hear better, see better, gain relief from aches, are "tranquilized," or abound with new energy.
It's wonderful what conviction can do!
Remember those fraternity initiations where they pretended to be heating a branding iron so that the boys could "brand" their victim? The poor initiate would first see the flames; then he'd see the branding iron; then he'd see it placed in the fire; then he'd be blindfolded. And then, to the accompaniment of sizzling noises, something would be pressed hard against his skin. He'd shriek with pain! He could feel the heat!
But what had been pressed against him was merely an ice cube.
A powerful thing, conviction!
If for twenty years you had been told dozens of times a day that you could relax simply by shrugging your shoulders several times, the gesture would probably work. It would provide a brief "concentration break" while you shifted your mental focus from present problems to moving your shoulder muscles. And since you'd be convinced that it had always worked, it would of course work again.
Are you beginning to see that you don't need cigarettes to relax?
You've Got to Concentrate on Something All the Time
"But I'd go crazy if I tried to work all day without a cigarette," you may reply. "I'd be a nervous wreck." No. You're not stating your case accurately. You might indeed become tense and nervous-not if you didn't smoke, but if you didn't take time out for concentration breaks throughout the day.
We'll hear an objection now from someone who says that his work doesn't require particular concentration. Or from a housewife who declares that washing dishes and making beds isn't "concentration." Yet both still feel the need for cigarettes to help them relax.
The fact is that the human mind must concentrate upon something every moment it is awake. You can't hold your mind completely blank. You're thinking about something all the time; and if whatever you're thinking about causes you to become tense, a concentration break will relax you. Any concentration break will relax you!
One of the chief reasons you have acquired the habit of smoking is just to give yourself the concentration break. But you can relax far more efficiently and far more effectively without smoking … once you learn the technique of complete relaxation through self-hypnosis.
You Won’t Get Fat from Not Smoking if You Don’t Overeat
Another frequently-repeated rationalization for the cigarette habit is: "I'd like to quit smoking, but every time I do I gain weight. And it's worse to be overweight than it is to smoke."
It isn't the fact that a person has stopped smoking that may cause him to gain weight. It's the fact that he substitutes the habit of overeating for the habit of smoking.
In the belief that he needs something tangible to relax tension (which he previously achieved by the mechanical movements of lighting a cigarette) a "re-formed addict" may take to eating candy bars or nibbling on sweets … something to do, anything to do, in other words, to take his mind away from the pressing problems, and to get back some of those old, familiar gestures that are part of the habitual pattern of smoking. The gesture of reaching for something, and picking it up, and then placing it in the mouth. The gestures and muscle movements of the lips, mouth and jaws: as many of the gestures of smoking as can be achieved, in other words, without a cigarette.
You'll soon see that this isn't necessary either.
Is It Killing Your Appetite, or Is It Killing You?
"But a cigarette kills my appetite," you answer. "I don't feel so hungry when I smoke, and so I don't eat as much. Without cigarettes, I’ll eat more."
The fact is that the cigarette isn't killing your appetite-but maybe it and the smoking side effects are killing you. Some of the ingredients in those cigarettes are harsh irritants to all parts of the digestive tract, and they can interfere with normal digestive juices and even aggravate stomach ulcers.
It may help to "kill your appetite for cigarettes" to know that Doctor A. C. Ivey of the University of Illinois found that a person who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day for ten years inhales eight quarts of tar in that time-the same kind of tars that Doctors Wynder and Graham injected in laboratory rats, thereby producing cancer.
Let's be reasonable about this. Appetite is the habit of hunger-it isn't hunger itself. Appetite is stimulated by seeing or thinking about food. Unless you substitute the habit of appetite for the habit of smoking, there is no reason why your appetite will be stimulated when you stop smoking. And we'll prevent this by giving you a better "habit substitute"-no calories, but exceedingly healthful.
And if you should have a weight problem, you will find there are better appetite depressants than cigarettes. Depressants that:
- do not over-stimulate movement of the bowels (cigarettes often do).
- don't cause heartburn, nausea, and abdominal pain (cigarettes frequently do).
- don't increase the death rate from ulcers in the stomach and duodenum (as cigarettes apparently do).
Or am I being unreasonable? Is burning the barn the only way to roast the pig?
Two other rationalizations often follow at this point; I know, you'll remember, because I practically wrote the script. They are both desperate in quality.
"It's an Addiction, Not a Habit"
Smokers who can't stop smoking-and non-smokers who don't comprehend the leechlike aspects of the habit-insist that the need for cigarettes is an addiction.
When an individual becomes a drug addict, the dependence on drugs is not only emotional but physiological. The marked and increasingly severe changes in his body chemistry are not fleeting or transient; they endure, and while they endure the body physiologically requires renewal of the drug effect. What is more, the body increasingly becomes dependent on ever-increasing doses.
When we smoke, there are physiological changes, of course-the heart rate, blood pressure, circulation and blood are affected. But when we stop smoking, the effects do not endure; they gradually disappear. The heart rate returns to normal (permanent damage excluded, of course) and so does the blood pressure. The body does not demand more nicotine; it continues as efficiently as possible to eliminate as much of this poison as possible.
It is a well accepted medical fact that the body never-no matter how long you have been smoking- never becomes accustomed to the nicotine and coal tars in cigarette smoke. You could put it this way. The body has a desperate desire and need for drugs when the drug addict attempts "withdrawal." Quite to the contrary, the body actually feels and is better when the smoker stops smoking. The "withdrawal" in smoking is mental, not physical.
"But the Damage Is Already Done"
Again and again I hear people say something that I often said myself: "I've smoked so long that the damage is done. There's no sense quitting now."
None of us really believes that, of course. If we knew that the damage "had been done," and that we were nevertheless alive and kicking, we'd do everything on earth to stay that way. What we're saying, I suppose, is that it can't happen to us.
But suppose you happen to be pessimistic and fatalistic about this. Let's at least, then, set the record straight.
Men who stopped smoking had a lower lung cancer death rate than those who continued to smoke-this was shown by The American Cancer Society in a massive four-year study of 187,783 men, 50 to 70 years of age. The death rate from this cause and the smoking side effects was halved for men who had stopped smoking for from one to ten years, was even less for those who had stopped for ten years or more.
In a study of coronary artery disease-the disease that is the greatest single cause of death for American men-the death rate for men who had been heavy smokers, and had stopped for more than one year, was also dramatically lower.
The fact of the matter is that all evidence points to a longer, healthier life for the person who quits the tobacco habit.
Even if there weren't dramatic differences in death rates to report, we know that at least we'll all feel a great deal healthier once the cough and hoarseness and chest and abdominal pains and heartburn and indigestion are gone.
And if it weren't for just one thing, you could even stop tomorrow. But that "one thing" is the fact that you-and a hundred million Americans like you-are being subjected to a continuous campaign of what psychiatrists call "suggestion." You are being "conditioned."
You, good friend, are being bombarded hypnotically regardless of smoking side effects.
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